A memoir of Martin Amis, which talks about his life and presents an intimate look at the process of writing. Exploring his relationship with his father, the great comic novelist, Kingsley Amis, it records the changing literary scene in Britain and the United States, along with anecdotes and pen portraits.

Records Sebastian Knight's, but his erratic and troubled persona remains as elusive as ever. Do they exist or are they an illusion?

Martin Amis has approached America from many arresting angles and interviewed its literati, filmmakers, thinkers, opinion makers, leaders and crackpots with characteristic discernment and wit. This book includes a gallery of Great American Novelists Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, Joseph Heller, William Burroughs, and many more.

Charles Highway, a precociously intelligent and highly sexed teenager, is determined to sleep with an older woman before he turns twenty. Rachel fits the bill perfectly and Charles plans his seduction meticulously, sets the scene with infinite care - but it doesn't come off quite as Charles expects.

Detective Hoolihan, a policewoman, a police in cop parlance, begins to investigate the death of Jennifer. The evidence swings towards suicide - the gun in her hand, the suicide note, the secret history of depression and drug addiction, and then swings away; could be suicide administer three and why does the autopsy reveal no sign of drug abuse?

The story of a life told backwards. Its narrator, Doctor Tod T. Friendly, trapped and hurtling towards a terrible secret, moves out of the blackest sleep to find himself surrounded by doctors and on the deathbed of a man in whose body he is imprisoned.